Social imagery of the future. Using narrative game “The quiet year” as a research tool

Abstract

The article draws attention to the potential possibilities and limitations of the use of narrative games in research on social ideas of the future, mainly civilisational threats, using the example of a pilot study based on the game The quiet year by Avery Alder. First of all, the text introduces the category of serious games and its usefulness for social sciences. The following section presents the results of a pilot study using the game The quiet year. It involves group storytelling of a small community after a civilisational disaster. The study focused on establishing and understanding the relationships that occur: 1) Between players (What types of interactions dominate between them?); 2) Between characters (What kinds of communities are created during the games?); 3) Between worlds (What experiences do players use when creating the game world? How important are popular culture or political messages in creating the game world?). The implementation of the study shows that the use of narrative games has great potential as a tool for researching social imagery of the future, with simultaneous limitations such as the need to control a large number of independent variables and the need to pay special attention to a high ethical level of research due to the potentially sensitive subject matter.